【推荐1】When it comes to the beaches in Sydney, it's hard to know where to begin. Around 100 beaches spread around the harbor and along the coast. Here are four of them.

Bronte Beach

Bronte's sea pool offers a protected ocean swim and is regarded as one of the best in Sydney—and much like beach culture itself, it's free. The nearby parkland has spacious barbecue areas for family gatherings. On public holidays, the park becomes a sea of busy people as parties take place.

Balmoral

Balmoral, on the north shore's Middle Harbor near Taronga Zoo, has an air of peace. Life moves at a more leisurely pace here. If it's loudness and pride you're after, this isn't it. What Balmoral does have overall is impressive views. And its calmness makes it a great swimming spot for families.

Garie Beach

Located in the Royal National Park, 54 kilometers south of Sydney, Garie Beach is accessible through Garie Road and isn't one for beach-lovers without a car. The large beach is very impressive, though. It's well preserved and is the perfect spot for a relaxing day away from the city. The facilities are top-grade and there is a great fishing spot off the east-facing rocks.

North Narrabeen Beach

Having some of the best and most consistent surf, the beach attracts board lovers from all over Sydney. Surfers have no discomfort making the 25-kilometer trip north to get to the three-kilometer-long beach. The northern end of the vast beach is protected from the northeasterly winds and is a surfer's destination, while the rest of it is ideal for swimming.

【推荐1】When summer night falls and the streetlights go on, a dozen cars arrive at an open outdoor space. Drivers open their car trunks and set up stalls (摊位) outside their vehicles. They are selling handmade cakes, coffee and iced drinks, as well as other inexpensive goods out of trunk, while customers relax nearby in camping chairs, listening to live bands and enjoying the soft summer evening.

Car stall fairs emerged as trendy play last summer in cities across China. For the past six months, selling hand-brewed coffee at car stall fairs on the outskirts of Xi’an, Shaanxi province, has been Zhuang Shenyang’s main way of supporting his family, with a daily income ranging from 50 ($6.98) to 2,000 yuan.

The 40-year-old — who learned oil painting in college — had to find ways to support his family last year after he closed down his training school. “After staying at home for several months without income, I made up my mind to go out to earn money, even if it was running a stall on the streets,” he said. He was inspired by a conversation with a roadside food vendor (小贩) earlier this year and found that the business with little investment can make a living.

He sets up his mobile stall almost every day and has attracted many regular customers. “People don’t just come for coffee, they like to sit and talk, often staying into the night,” Zhuang said. “It’s a way young people like to socialize outdoors.”

He named his coffee stall “A Coffee Bar in Debt” with self-deprecating (自嘲的) humor. “I want to convey an attitude that even though I am in debt, I will never ‘let it rot’,” Zhuang said. “The popularity of the fairs shows that many people’s incomes have been affected by the epidemic, but they don’t want to ‘lie flat’ at home; instead, they work hard,” he said.

【推荐3】Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phippe Vassal, this year’s Pritzker Prize winners, were as surprised as anyone else when the most famous award in architecture was made public yesterday.

“Of course it’s very pleasant, and we are very pleased,”Lacaton said at a conference with her partner, both smiling broadly from their black eyeglasses.

Putting aside their eyeglasses, Lacaton and Vassal could not be more different from an earlier generation of Pritzker winners, known for their easily recognizable styles and grand work. Instead, the two apply their simple guideline to their work on old urban buildings for low-income families: Never destroy, never remove or replace, always add, transform, and reuse!

When Lacaton and Vassal were asked to redesign a particularly large and over-crowded public housing block in Bordeaux in 2017, the residents (居民) told them they could not afford to move, even temporarily, but they wanted bigger units. Their solution was to replace the folding wooden front door with sliding glass door to each unit and painted the ugly walls with something bright. Suddenly, everyone had roomy outdoor space, some of which could be used during the winter as “winter gardens.”

“So, people can not only get sun and light and spend time with family, but it’s also open to neighbors,” Columbia University architecture professor Mabel Wilson.“I would love to live in one of the apartments t they’ve redesigned.”

Their approach of cheap and creative re-adaption could be a model for urban planning in the US, Wilson adds, where destruction has been seen as a solution to old public housing in such cities as Chicago and St. Louis.

There’s a lot of violence in architecture and urbanism. We try to be precise. We try to work with kindness,” Lacaton once explained.“Buildings are beautiful when people feel well in them, when the light inside is beautiful and the air is pleasant, when the exchange with the outside seems easy and gentle, and when uses and sensations are unexpected,”

Lacaton and Vassal started their firm in Paris in 1987. Together, they worked primarily in France.

【推荐2】Palestinian farmer Salman al-Nabahin was working in his garden in Gaza when he noticed that some of the new trees he’d planted on his land did not root properly. Curious about what might be causing the issue, al-Nabahin asked his son to help him start digging.

His son’s ax (斧子) struck something hard. When the two men began to clear away the dirt, they discovered an item they did not recognize. A little Internet searching provided the answer to their mystery: They’d come across a Byzantine-era floor mosaic (拜占庭时期马赛克地画) featuring birds and other animals.

This happened six months ago. Now, archaeologists (考古学家) are hard at work studying the flooring to learn more about its secrets and civilization values.

The mosaic features 17 images of birds and other animals presented in bright colors. Archaeologists believe artists created the flooring sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries, though they don’t know whether the mosaic had religious (宗教的) origins. In total, the land covering the entire mosaic is about 500 square meters, and the mosaic itself measures about 23 square meters. Some parts of the mosaic appear to be damaged, likely from the roots of an old tree.

“These are the most beautiful mosaic floors discovered in Gaza, both in terms of the quality of the vivid representation and the complexity of the pattern,” says René Elter, an archaeologist in Jerusalem. “Never have mosaic floors of this precision in the patterns and richness of the colors been discovered in the Gaza Strip.”

The Gaza Strip, which is located between Israel and Egypt and was a busy trade route throughout history, is home to many ancient civilizations. The farmer and his son discovered the mosaic about a kilometer from the border with Israel. Archaeologists and other experts are concerned about the mosaic’s future because of the ongoing conflict there and a lack of funding for historical protection.

【推荐3】When archaeologist(考古学家)Zahi Hawass and his team set out to excavate an area near the Egyptian city of Luxor in September 2020, all they were hoping to find was King Tutankhamun's mortuary temple. Instead, the archaeologists came across the largest ancient city ever found in Egypt. Hawass, who exposed the discovery on April 8, 2021, believes the extremely large, well-preserved city is the "So'oud Atun", or the "Rise of Aten".

"The discovery of this lost city is the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun," Betsy Bryan, an Egyptology professor at Johns Hopkins University and member of the team, said in the statement.

The city dates back 3, 400 years to the times of Amenhotep III, one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs(法老), who ruled Egypt from 1391 to 1353 BC. The ninth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty ruled during a time of peace, allowing him to accumulate large amounts of wealth. While archeologists suspected the pharaoh had used some of his riches to build what Hawass refers to as "the golden city", they'd never been able to find it.

The researchers believe that his son, King Akhenaten, briefly lived in So'oud Atun before founding the city of Amarna about 250 miles away. Historians think the pharaoh and his followers left to escape the priests(祭司)who were unhappy about his decision to give up all other deities(神抵)in favor of the sun god Aten. Following Akhenaten's death, his son, Tutankhamun, moved to Thebes, which also served as Ancient Egypt's capital. The scientists aren't sure if So'oud Atun was ever occupied again.

So far Hawass and his team have unearthed thousands of amazing artifacts(手工艺品). Among them are rings, amulets, and pottery vessels. They also found a well-preserved bakery, cooking, and food preparation area, complete with ovens and storage vessels. Due to its size, the researchers believe it may have been a commercial operation. Hawass, who says the team has only explored about a third of the lost city so far, believes there're a lot more surprises to be found.